When I hear a sudden burst from a horn, I am startled, as if one had provoked such wildness as he could not rule nor tame. He dares to wake the echoes which he cannot put to rest.[176] _July 8._ Doubt and falsehood are yet good preachers. They affirm roundly, while they deny partially. * * * * * I am pleased to learn that Thales was up and stirring by night not unfrequently, as his astronomical discoveries prove. * * * * * It was a saying of Solon that "it is necessary to observe a medium in all things." The golden mean, in ethics as in physics, is the centre of the system, and that about which all revolve; and though, to a distant and plodding planet, it is the uttermost extreme, yet, when that planet's year is complete, it will be found central.[177] They who are alarmed lest virtue run into extreme good, have not yet wholly embraced her, but described only a slight arc about her, and from so small a curvature you can calculate no centre whatever; but their mean is no better than meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity. The brave man, while he observes strictly this golden mean, seems to run through all extremes with impunity; like the sun, which now appears in the zenith, now in the horizon, and again is faintly reflected from the moon's disk, and has the credit of describing an entire great circle, crossing the equinoctial and solstitial colures, without detriment to his steadfastness or mediocrity.[178] * * * * * Every planet asserts its own to be the centre of the system. * * * * * Only _meanness_ is mediocre, _moderate_; but the true _medium_ is not contained within any _bounds_, but is as wide as the ends it connects. * * * * * When Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the Athenians and not to the Megarians, he caused the tombs to be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megarians to the opposite side.[179] So does each part bear witness to all, and the history of all the past may be read in a single grain of its ashes. _July 9._ In most men's religion the ligature which should be its muscle and sinew is rather like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in their hands, when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, the other end being attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently, as in their case, the thread breaks, being stretched, and they are left without an asylum.[180] * * * * *